Page 79 - Nightmare Japan Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

66 Nightmare Japan

small pen-knife during their bouts of passion. These sessions cause
Ryuzaki to feel as if ‘[s]omething inside’ him had simultaneously
‘crumbled and exploded’, and he impulsively severs Kitami’s right arm
during a photo-shoot.
After spending a year in prison for his assault upon Kitami,
Ryuzaki returns to his apartment, happily discovering that a fellow editor
at Muscle has preserved Kitami’s severed arm in a narrow glass canister.
Additionally, Ryuzaki reveals that his time in prison has culminated in
two obsessions: (1) finding and confronting the now one-armed Kitami,
who has become a notorious yet elusive hustler; and (2) obtaining and
viewing a copy of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film, the adaptation of the
Marquis de Sade’s Inferno-esque novel, Salò (a film mislabelled
throughout Muscle as Salo: The 100 Days of Sodom). Ryuzaki’s dual
quests, combined with his relationship with Chida and Yoko, a young and
sexually adventurous couple, result in his taking a job in the ticket booth
of Lunatic Theater, an underground cinema specializing in obscure and
controversial titles, including a retrospective of the films of Pier Paolo
Pasolini (sans Salò). Unable to locate Kitami or view a copy of Salò, the
latter endeavor frustrated both by Japanese censorship codes and the
destruction of an imported video cassette at the hands of a cynical long-
haired hustler, Ryuzaki becomes increasingly frustrated. In retaliation for
the destruction of the video cassette of Salo, Ryuzaki beats the long-
haired hustler to death with a metal pipe. Later, when he returns to his
apartment, Ryuzaki finds both an invitation to a “Masquerade” at Lunatic
Theater, as well as a stocking to be worn over his head. At the
masquerade, Ryuzaki finally encounters Kitami. Kitami beats Ryuzaki,
who readily welcomes any torture Kitami wishes to dispense, but when
Kitami threatens to sever Ryuzaki’s arm, Ryuzaki takes Kitami’s sword
and blinds himself so that he may ‘forever see [Kitami’s] body the way it
was when [they] met’. The film ends with Ryuzaki and Kitami on a pier
at dawn, waltzing in a manner reminiscent of the young Italian soldiers
dancing during Salò’s closing sequence.
Most of Muscle’s erotic encounters conform to conventional
pinku eiga aesthetics and prohibitions. Even during the film’s most
erotically-charged moments, the characters’ genitalia remain safely